Vogue Italia’s Black Barbie: A Step Forward or a Step Back?

Last year, Italian Vogue shook the fashion world with its “All Black issue, which sold out on many newsstands. This year, the July issue features Kristen McMenamy on the cover, but comes with a delightful supplement devoted to black Barbies.

It is Barbie’s 50th birthday, after all, and Mattel does have those new black Barbies to promote. And while this supplement is not full-sized like a regular magazine (it’s about 6 inches wide; 7.5 inches long) somehow the doll scale makes sense.

As a girl growing up in Los Angeles, my mother always made sure to buy us Black dolls, especially Barbies. I even had a Black Ken doll! And while it was great to have a doll that looked like me, the reality was that it still sold me and other little girls dangerous ideas about what a woman’s body should look like, and what was considered beautiful. In preparing to write this post, I spoke with a friend of mine who happens to be a Black dad with a young daughter. He told me that while he reluctantly buys his daughter Barbies because she loves them, he is concerned about what it teaches his little girl about having a positive self-image. As a result, he makes it his responsibility to teach his daughter about how special and beautiful she is as a black girl.

I loved Vogue Italia’s Black Issue last year. I loved that it featured Tocarra, a voluptuous, curvy woman who was far from a size 2. And I like the concept of using all Black Barbies in a Vogue spread. But I have to wonder if it is actually a step backwards. Barbies themselves use the white female body as a the prototype for beauty. Even the new Black Barbies do not have the hips, ass and curves that myself and other Black women possess. It’s great that Mattel has barbies of all shade, but what about all sizes? What taking into consideration that other races and ethnic groups have different ideas of what women’s bodies actually look like? The fashion industry often creates fashions, ad campaigns, and yes, even Barbie photo spreads that leave Black female bodies out of the equation and therefore, out of the question when defining what a “perfect body” looks like and who is able to possess it.

So what does everyone else think? Is the Black Barbie issue of Vogue Italia actually progress? Or does it still perpetuate anxiety and even denial of the Black female body as one that is indeed normal and beautiful?

Babie is a disgusting doll whether it is white or black. I further hated the “special” edition last year as it did not normalize Black beauty but treated it like a special pet project. The bottom line as far as I am concerned is that fashion industry must affirm that women of color of all races, hues and elasticities must be afffirmed as beautiful.

Ditto what Renee said, because when I saw the question posed I wondered if you’d deduce this post down to comparative analysis. Being that you did, the dimensions of a Barbie doll are classically disproportionate, so the thinness meets breasts that would have to be cosmetically added meets waist to hip ratio is irrelevant as far as the black doll conforming to the white doll once reality hits the picture. The reality is the doll was never about size portrayal but being a toy that could be easily played with, dressed and groomed in plastic form.

Furthermore, Vogue is a fashion magazine. The fact that it paid a shout out to a woman over a size 10 as a plus size model is moot to me as a plus size women at a size 20 who was always (and I do mean as a very competitive tri-sport athlete for all of my childhood and teenage years) over size 14 in children’s, junior’s, misses and now women’s clothing. The fact that a fashion mag that typically shows women who are size 6 or less is showing a Barbie that would be a size 0 with boobs to fit a woman in a triple F cup never enters my mind as problematic! It’s fashion and fashion equals “skinny” models. What’s so bad with “skinny” dolls in lieu of “skinny” models – no matter their complexions?!

I’m biased because I love Barbie(s)… as for progress? I don’t believe it’s really progress, just a bit of fun but I can see how it can be an issue in regards to body and ethnic (of the non white variety… or lack of variety being shown) image. It is a step backward in terms of ethnic variation, but not exactly here nor there in terms of the type of body used in high fashion. And the fact that it’s a toy manufactured by a mostly white owned corporation probably makes it more like a thousand steps back…

I don’t think Barbie used a “white female body” as the prototype… look at the average population of white females, you’ll be hard pressed to find one that looks like Barbie naturally.

As for the hips… ass and curves – Barbie dolls are a really bad example to use because it’s a toy at 1/6th scale that wears human scaled fabrics and corresponding thicknesses. You could ask the same with high fashion models, even the models of colour are thin and almost shapeless.